The Liar

by Bobby Adair

  Tommy laughed. That had to be true. He surveyed the path they'd been on for the last thirty minutes, all the way down to where it disappeared into the trees behind them.

  “Nobody’s coming yet,” concluded Summer.

  “We have some time,” agreed Tommy. “We should check the car for anything we might need before we go.”

  Five minutes later, they'd ransacked a winter survival kit stashed in the back of the truck. They had protein bars, energy drinks, a hand axe, and a small duffle with a few just-in-case foil blankets inside. Summer found several magazines to fit in her AR-15, bringing her load to nearly two hundred rounds. There was nothing for Tommy's AK-47, and he made a mental note to switch to the more popular AR-15 if the chance presented itself. Ammunition for that weapon would be much easier to find.

  When they finished, Tommy positioned himself at the open driver’s side door. “Are you ready?”

  Summer nodded.

  “Step away from the vehicle.”

  “Be careful.”

  Tommy stepped halfway back inside the SUV and felt a tremble as he looked out over the hood and saw nothing but blue sky and distant summits. There was no room for error. He put a foot on the brake, shifted the still-running truck into gear, and rolled out onto the ground.

  The deputy’s SUV crept forward on idle, leaving Tommy plenty of time to make sure nothing in the door or on the seat caught any part of his clothing or gear. The left front wheel rolled over the loose rock on the edge of the road, and the SUV leaned. The other front wheel followed, and with the weight of the engine pulling it down, the vehicle accelerated and disappeared.

  Before Tommy could stand up to look, it was already crashing down the mountain.

  Rushing over, Summer asked, “Are you alright?”

  “Fine.”

  “Let’s get walking, then.”

  ***

  Nothing in the mountains was ever as close as it looked. Not to Tommy, anyway. He figured it had to do with a spatial intuition he'd developed growing up in East Texas, where he could always walk in a few minutes to the farthest thing he could see.

  So when he was able to see from a vantage up on the mountain the place he had to hike to, where the four-wheeler path finally entered the forest again, Tommy didn’t think it was going to take them half an hour to get there.

  Looking back up the trail they’d followed, and panting from the pace, Summer said, “Nobody’s coming.”

  “Yet.” Tommy had been glancing over his shoulder every few minutes since they’d started walking, but he looked anyway. Out on the bare mountain trail, with nothing at all to use as cover, they’d been vulnerable.

  “You don’t think shoving the police truck over the edge will fool them?”

  "It’s an obvious ploy," answered Tommy. "They may send someone down the mountain to check for bodies, and that'll delay them. They may leave someone behind while the others pursue. They may not have the manpower for any of it. They may not even come.” Tommy laughed bitterly, "Or they could be sending a platoon-sized mob of political zealots to avenge what we did."

  “Because we don’t know anything about them.” Summer seemed to sag under that admission.

  “You need to get back to Spring Creek as urgently as I do,” said Tommy. “What you’re doing is as important to you as finding Emma is to me.”

  “Finding Emma is important to me, too. I don’t know where and when this civil war is going to end—we’re going to need young people like Emma if we want a hope of ever rebuilding the country you and I grew up in. We talked about this, Tommy.”

  “The big picture is less important to me, than to you.” Tommy walked on through the dappled light under the pines.

  ***

  No one had seen them go into the forest. No one except a tracker with those exaggerated skills they have in movies would be able to follow them. Well, maybe if they had a bloodhound, but that was getting into the realm of fantasy-level worry. Nobody knew who Summer and Tommy were, or that’s to say nobody had any way to connect them to the ambush.

  Unless the FBI came—

  “What are you thinking?” asked Summer

  “Did you used to ask your husband that when you were married?”

  “Oh,” Summer barked, “there’s the snarky Tommy Joss I remember from before.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like it sounded.”

  “Yes you did,” said Summer, “but don’t worry about it.”

  “Still.”

  Summer wasn’t looking for a fight. “No, I never asked my husband that when we were married. I ask you, because if I wasn’t asking you to talk to me, I think you might never say anything.”

  They were well into the trees by then, following the track, and feeling safer with each step. “In truth, I was worrying about the possibility we’d be followed. And thinking about an FBI investigation into those people we shot.”

  Summer laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

  “I knew they were pointless thoughts, even as I was having them. You asked.”

  “I did,” she admitted.

  After a while, Summer said, “Up here on the right, keep an eye out for another trail that leads off toward Lugenbuhl’s house.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  "My ex used to keep a pair of four-wheelers in the garage. He'd drag us out all the time to ride. I know the trails up here pretty well."

  “That’s how you knew Lugenbuhl’s house was down this way?”

  "That, and I've lived here all my life. Spring Creek isn't that big of a town, once you take the ski condos and the tourists out of the equation."

  “That’s why you’re along,” Tommy reminded himself. “You know the lay of the land.”

  They walked on in silence except for the sound of their feet slipping on the loose dirt and pine needles when the ground grew steep.

  “Before,” said Summer, starting the conversation again, “back at the hospital. You said you’d tell me about your dad. And the stuff you did.”

  “The killing?” Tommy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not necessary, is it?” Tommy stopped and looked down a trail that veered off to the right from the main track. “This way?”

  Summer walked down it, taking the lead. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t,” said Tommy.

  “Why?”

  “There’s no point to it. You know what I am now. What I was back then wasn’t that different.”

  “Do you think it’s because of your father?”

  “How do you mean?” asked Tommy. “Like a genetic predisposition?”

  “No, I meant the abuse.”

  “Look,” said Tommy. “I’m not trying to hide any secrets about this. I’m not trying to play mysterious to keep you asking questions. It was all a long time ago. And yeah, unfortunately, I think my dad made me what I am. My mom, too, because she wouldn’t stand up to him, would never take me and Sam and run away. And Sam, too, because in the only way she could, she protected me from Fred. Tried to, anyway.”

  “Protected you?” asked Summer. “How? Did she fight him?”

  Tommy truly didn’t want to talk about any of this. “There must be a million shows on TV about bad parents and fucked up kids. Countless movies. Shit all over the internet. Look up any of it, and you’ll get the gist. The details differ, but in the end, it’s all the same. Shitty people who can’t handle the responsibility of a driver’s license don’t have the good sense to use birth control. They pop out some kids they don’t want and are incapable of caring for. And then they do stupid shit to the kids. The shit becomes a habit. Maybe they like it. It’s always the same. Nothing ever happens to the parents, and the children always suffer. Only the details are different. It’s all the same.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  "I'm sorry for my sister," said Tommy, not even meaning to keep talking. "I got out of that family and I g
ot out of the life it led me to. I didn't deserve to ever be living in a multi-million dollar mountain mansion on a golf course. I should have been locked up twenty years ago, and that's where I should be now, but here I am. Sam, she never had a chance. She tried to be a hero, and she never understood the price she was paying for it."

  “Fred did things to her… bad things?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “And she’d let him, to keep him from beating you.”

  “There was only one thing Fred liked more than pounding someone with his fists.” Tommy choked up, ambushed by feelings he thought he’d mashed out of existence a long, long time ago.

  “It makes sense now.”

  “None of it does.” Tommy sniffled and wiped his eyes. “Not then. Not now.”

  “The debt,” said Summer. “Faith told me you had bills you were trying to pay down. It never sat well with her.”

  “It was a problem for us,” Tommy admitted. “But she knew about the debt before we got married.”

  “It was from all your sister’s trips to rehab wasn’t it?”

  “And the ex,” Tommy explained. “My sister got to a point where she couldn’t take care of herself. I used to pay for her apartment and her bills in the years before she died. And yes, the endless trips to rehab. It was all a waste, but I couldn't see that then.”

  “You were paying her back,” guessed Summer.

  “Trying,” answered Tommy, feeling the tears threatening to come again. “Tried. But Fred took her soul, and she tried to fill the hole with drugs. In the beginning, it was prescription pills she stole from my parents—opioids. Then meth. In the end, meth won. She killed herself with it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

  “Some people should never have kids.”

  “She’s why you do what you do now?”

  Tommy stopped and looked at Summer without any understanding. “I thought you said Fred made me into a homicidal bastard.”

  Shaking her head, Summer said, “Not exactly, but I think you’re something else now. In your heart, you’re a hero. I think Sam was your role model. You’re trying to be like her.”

  Tommy started down the path again. “Sam never killed anyone.”

  “Maybe Sam should have killed Fred when you were both still young enough to be saved.”

  Tommy ignored her.

  “Maybe you were stronger than her all along? You did what you had to do. You still do.”

  Chapter 21

  They stopped for a breather where a sofa-sized boulder lay in the shade beside the trail. Summer sat down and opened up an off-brand energy drink.

  Tommy took a seat beside her, and felt the weariness of the exertion and lack of sleep weighing on him. “When is Barry’s attack on Spring Creek supposed to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Summer. “He talked about trying something yesterday evening, but I didn’t see any evidence that happened when we were in Spring Creek.”

  “Unless they were slaughtered because they’re a bunch of amateurs.”

  "So are the 704s. We talked about this.” Summer finished half the bottle of orange, electrolyte-fortified juice, and handed the bottle to Tommy. "I need to find a way to tell him about the police and deputies being held at the jail."

  “You think Crosby was telling the truth about that?”

  “I do. Don’t you?”

  “In this case, your opinion is better than mine. You know him. I don’t.”

  “I don’t think he was lying to us.”

  Tommy gulped the rest of the orange drink. “So what’s the plan? We break into Lugenbuhl’s garage and steal one of his cars? Drive back to town? Hope we can get through the checkpoints?”

  “No.” Summer grinned and exaggerated a look down at the wide four-wheeler track they’d been following. “This is here for a reason.”

  “Okay, I’m an idiot.” Tommy laughed. “He’s got a four-wheeler in his garage?”

  “A side-by-side,” said Summer. “This is the path he takes to access the trails through the rest of the mountains around here.”

  “And we can follow these to Spring Creek without going back the way we came?” asked Tommy.

  “I know a way.”

  Changing the subject, Tommy asked, “You think this toddler kid of his will be there?”

  Summer shook her head. “We should be so lucky. No, Frank’s too smart to leave him at his house. He’d have to know there’d be a backlash to his 704s picking up people all over Summit County. And what better leverage to get your loved one back than to use the enemy boss’s kid?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it in exactly those terms,” admitted Tommy, “but you’re right.”

  “Tommy,” said Summer, “if the brat is there, you know we have to negotiate to get all the hostages back. You know that, right? Not just Emma and Faith.”

  "Like you said. It's a moot point. The kid won't be there. We're just stealing Frank's side-by-side, and we're heading back to Spring Creek. That's where we'll find and capture Frank, and that's even better than kidnapping his son.” Tommy stood up and stretched his back. "We should get moving."

  ***

  “Jesus,” said Tommy, “he lives like a Bond villain.”

  They were perched among a tumble of stones the size of small cars, looking down through the trees on Frank Lugenbuhl’s house. It stood a few hundred feet down the hill from them, sitting in a small, bowl-shaped valley that kept the back half of the property shielded from the weather. Out front, the mountain fell steeply away, opening up a westerly view that would be the envy of any dot-com Denver millionaire.

  The house, though, looked destined to be haunted, as though Frank had planned for it one day to be abandoned, sitting alone in the forest with its foreboding architecture, jagged, dark masonry, and charcoal-stained logs daring lost hikers to peek inside.

  “I wish we could see the front,” said Summer.

  “So we could see if any cars are here?” guessed Tommy.

  She nodded.

  Tommy pointed down the steep four-wheeler track running through the forest. "The trees look thick enough this way, I don't think you'd be able to see the trail from the windows on this side of the house. And there at the bottom, it looks like it comes out pretty close to the far corner of the garage. My bet is we can sneak up the side of the house, and look into the courtyard for parked cars."

  “All without being seen?” Summer didn’t like the plan much.

  “Or,” offered Tommy, “we forget the four-wheeler path and work our way down through the forest. The house is built right among the trees, so there’s no yard to cross. We could get there unseen. Sneak along the walls and peek in a few windows. If the place looks empty, we break in. If not—” Tommy finished with a shrug.

  “We ambushed that group at the ranch house,” Summer reminded.

  “You’re getting brave,” observed Tommy. “There were four of us then. We were able to cover much more of the house.” He took another look at the mini vampire castle. “Taking that place, with no knowledge of how many hostiles could be upstairs—that would be a risk.”

  “We don’t have many choices,” said Summer. “To walk anywhere from here will take us hours.”

  “Let’s get down there and see what we see,” suggested Tommy. “If it looks good, we proceed. If not, we bail.”

  “Agreed.”

  Tommy led the way down.

  ***

  The sneaking was easy. The house had lots of windows, but they were spread out, with high sills, leaving plenty of space to stand outside and peek in, or pass by beneath without being seen.

  Tommy and Summer checked the rooms on the first floor, all walled in rich, dark woods with massive exposed beams supporting the upper levels. Expensive leather chairs and ornately carved tables filled the spaces. Tommy checked two different doors. Neither was locked, though he only checked the handles and didn't push them open. Someone had to be in the house, or Lugenbuhl didn't feel the need to lock up with
the house being so remotely located.

  They climbed an outside staircase, walked a balcony which surrounded most of the second floor, and found much the same thing they did on the first. Large rooms with oversized furniture. Everything in order. No bed unmade. No towels on the floor. No dish stranded on a dresser, no cold coffee cup waiting on a nightstand. The place looked Zillow-ready, unoccupied.

  Three cars were parked in the courtyard, though. None of them looked particularly old or new, not expensive yet not cheap.

  “The basement?” suggested Summer, as they stood on the balcony against the wall outside one of the bedrooms. “Around the north side of the house, when we were checking the first floor, there was a room down there with glass doors and windows opening up to the outside.”

  Tommy nodded. He’d seen it, too. “If somebody’s inside, they’ve got to be there or in the garage.”

  “We could sneak through the house,” suggested Summer, “and try to steal the side-by-side out of the garage without being noticed.”

  “And risk being shot as we’re driving away?” asked Tommy. “Once we start the engine and open the garage door, we’ll probably get their attention.”

  “You think there are 704s here?”

  “It could be the cleaning lady and the gardener,” guessed Tommy, “No way to know until we see them.”

  “Do we go in and surprise them, then?”

  “I like life a lot better when the answers just wait for you where you want to look for them.”

  “How’s that usually work for you?” Summer smiled.

  “Like this.” Tommy ran through the choices in his mind, trying to find a low-risk path to the goal. As usual, though, every road forward sucked.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “You take the outside,” concluded Tommy. “Like last time at the ranch.”

  “You’re going to the front door?” Summer clearly didn’t approve.

  “Nope.”

  ***